Iran has already been striking the US in the region in dozens of rocket and drone attacks over the past year.
Reports over the weekend said that Iran was upping its rhetoric against any sort of US-backed air defense pact that might link Israel and several Arab countries together. Ostensibly, such cooperation would be defensive, but Iran and its proxies are currently the only real threat to the region.
Dressed in their distinctive black uniforms, fours soldiers of Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Services last week revisited the scenes of their bloody battles against ISIS in Mosul, the northern city the elite force played a key role in liberating five years ago.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said its forces had neutralized a “terrorist cell” in Salmas near the Turkish border.
The IRGC issued a statement announcing that its ground forces tasked with protecting the border triangle with Turkey and the Kurdistan region of Iraq “neutralized a terrorist cell after intelligence monitoring.”
Even if the US terrorist designation is not lifted, and there is agreement on the JCPOA, the IRGC will still be the power broker of Iranian domestic politics.
As Qatar’s foreign minister visited Tehran Wednesday in an effort to follow up on talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal, there’s no indication the sides have come close to a resolution on the issue of removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) from the US terror list.
“People will die because of this vote,” US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said of the Security Council’s failure to reauthorize the cross-border mechanism.
Millions of Syrian lives hang in the balance after Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Friday that would have kept humanitarian aid flowing for another year to Syria’s impoverished northwest.
Algeria’s president managed to bring together Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh for the first time in 6 years, but divisions between the two rival factions they represent may be too deep at this point.
Even if the US terrorist designation is not lifted, and there is agreement on the JCPOA, the IRGC will still be the power broker of Iranian domestic politics.
As Qatar’s foreign minister visited Tehran Wednesday in an effort to follow up on talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal, there’s no indication the sides have come close to a resolution on the issue of removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) from the US terror list.
Iranians have grown accustomed to high inflation and rising prices, yet recent macroeconomic trends are unprecedented.
Iran’s official inflation rate is reaching new highs. The Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) — the country’s main statistics agency — reported a monthly inflation rate of 12.2% and a point-to-point rate of 52.5% for the Iranian month ending June 21. Both are record numbers.
Time is running out to prevent what Yemen envoy Tim Lenderking warns will be a “massive oil spill the likes of which the world has not seen.”
Off the coast of Yemen lies an aging oil tanker that could rupture at any moment. Experts say it’s not a matter of if but when the FSO Safer leaks more than one million barrels of light crude oil into the sea — four times the amount spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989.
With Syria’s sole remaining route for cross-border aid in peril, a London-based oil company is lobbying for an initiative that would see the proceeds of Syrian oil being used for aid, with the money going to the UN rather than Damascus.